I Removed My Phone From the Bedroom for a Week. Here's What I Learned. Tanner Garrity, provided by FacebookTwitterEmail Five years ago, photographer Eric Pickersgill released a series of black-and-white images that depict Americans doing ordinary things: sitting around the dinner table, grilling in the driveway, suntanning on a boat. For each photo, though, there’s a catch — Pickersgill’s removed their phones. Every single person in the stills is staring down at an empty hand. The project is a chilling commentary on the most widespread addiction of our age. And in my opinion, it’s felt most acutely in this photo, where a husband and wife lie in bed, their backs to each other, squinting into their devices before they officially say good night. It hurts to look at because it’s so familiar. Most of us regularly begin and our days with our phones inches from our eyes.